New Zealand Listener - October 13, 2018

OCTOBER 13 2018 LISTENER 49

prod to writing. It’s liberating not to be

writing about oneself and to have a clear

directive – “This is what the song has to

say and this is what the character is feel-

ing” – to take a character’s point of view.

I may not agree with their point of view,

but we can all empathise with others’

drives and feelings, even if we disagree

with how they respond to those psycho-

logical forces. One musical was about

former Philippines First Lady Imelda

Marcos. She was born on the poorer side

of a powerful and well-connected family,

and felt excluded from Filipino “society”

as a result. Much of what drove her and

fired her ambition was this pain at being

excluded and rejected. Well, we all know

that feeling, we have all had it. But we all

don’t get to play it out on a world stage.

I got to write songs that are sentimen-

tal or heartbreaking for musicals that I

would never write for myself. I wrote to

[Bowie] as I was writing and told him

how exciting and liberating I thought the

experience was. But to be clear, I am not

a musical-theatre person. I don’t know all

the conventions and hate the typical sing-

ing style, but I could see that having songs

help tell an emotional story, well, who

knows? There might be a new way to do

that other than [using] the musical-theatre

conventions, which are pretty corny.

K: Your 2012 book How Music

Works said “this is not an auto-

biographical account of my life

as a singer and musician”. Why

did you write it the way you did?

DB: There are a lot of “behind

the music” rock-star bios out

there – a few of them were even

written by the artists themselves.

We don’t need another one of

those, and besides, for me it’s

more interesting to wonder in

a more general way why music sounds

the way it does – not just my music, but

lots of music. As I began accumulating

chapters, I realised it had a theme – con-

text matters. My hope is that it might be

enjoyable and useful even for people who

don’t know me or care about my music.

K: What is the best book you’ve read this

year?

DB: Other Minds – the book about octopi, a

different kind of intelligence.

K: You’ve also written about your love of

cycling. Will you be bringing a bicycle to

New Zealand?

DB: That depends on the freight situation,

but I sure hope to be able to ride around

Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

K: And can I invite you to continue our

African food scouting tradition and hunt

down some Ethiopian while on tour? I

know of two spots in Wellington ...

DB: Ha ha, we had this conversation – I’ll

be happy to try Wellington Ethiopian, but

might opt for local seafood first!

K: I want a David Byrne mixtape on this

tour, please. Swapsies?

DB: Of course. FYI, I do a monthly stream-

ing radio playlist. Each one is about two

hours long and they vary in theme from

month to month. My website has it, as do

SoundCloud and streaming services. l

David Byrne’s American Utopia tour

(supported by Kimbra) is at TSB Arena,

Wellington (sold out) November 13; Horncastle

Arena, Christchurch, November 15; Spark

Arena Auckland, November 17.

Five days after David

Byrne’s final New Zea-

land show, Auckland’s

Silo Theatre opens its

season of live perfor-

mances of Here Lies

Love, his 2010 concept

album with Fatboy Slim

inspired by the extrava-

gant life of Imelda Marcos, which

originally featured 22 guest vocalists.

Silo’s singing cast will be a quintet

and include Jennifer Ward-Lealand

and Ria Hall. Director Sophie Roberts

says having Byrne in town was pure

coincidence.

What are the chances that Byrne would be

in the country so close to your show?

We programmed Here Lies Love more

than a year ago so we had no idea he

was coming to Auckland back then.

I’m a firm believer that there are no

coincidences, though, so I think this

is the universe telling us that David

is meant to come and hang out with

us in rehearsal while he’s here. Our

musical director, Robin Kelly, and I have

discussed a dream scenario where we

all become best friends and he stays

for our opening night to have a hoon

on guitar. I say dream but I’m actu-

ally 100% serious about making this a

reality.

Will you and the cast be attending his

concert?

Absolutely! It’s a pretty special oppor-

tunity for our team while we are in the

process of bringing our version of his

work to life. He’s a true theatre artist in

his approach to live performance so I

have no doubt it will be really inspiring

for us.

So, given it’s about Imelda Marcos, is most

of the show’s production budget being

spent on shoes?

We haven’t got to the shoes yet. At

the moment the design team and I are

dreaming up how to make Q Theatre

feel like the inside of a disco ball at the

best party ever.

Here Lies Love, Q Theatre, Auckland,

November 22-December 8.

BYRNING

DOWN

THE HOUSE

Sophie Roberts